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Most coconut products sourced from small producers

Coconuts and sustainability

By Rachel Cernansky For the Camera

Posted:
09/04/2012 03:22:53 PM MDT

Updated:
09/04/2012 03:26:53 PM MDT

Michael Catalano, a Boulder physician who plays baseball and does weight training several times a week, is conscientious about staying properly hydrated, and tries to stay informed about the beverages he spends his money on -- and he's a big fan of coconut water.

When he feels like paying the premium price, he'll keep some on hand during a game. "Two sips of water, one sip of this," he said, holding a bottle in his hand in a Whole Foods recently. Plus, unlike many manufactured sports drinks -- and he does drink Gatorade -- he said, "this is whatever Mother Nature put into the coconut."

Catalano is far from alone. According to Arthur Gallego, communications director for the Vita Coco brand, the industry is now estimated to be worth $350 million, up from $60 million in 2009, and it's the fastest-growing beverage category on the retail market. While there are some independently-run companies, such as Vita Coco, industry observers find it telling that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have also entered the market.

There's also coconut oil, which has been exploding in the health world after being criticized for years because of its high saturated fat content. However, advocates say it appeared unhealthful largely because hydrogenated versions were studied, rather than virgin coconut oil. For Whole Foods, sales growth of the oil has been in the high double digits, a New York Times story reported last year.

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Coconut products are turning up in major supermarkets and chains like Costco, too. In other words, coconut has gone mainstream. And there's been plenty of debate in recent months over whether coconut products deliver the health benefits -- particularly coconut water as a sports beverage -- that its proponents promise. But there's a quieter, more nascent debate over whether or not coconut is environmentally sustainable.

For foodies who emphasize buying local, it's never going to qualify: Coconut is produced mainly in Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, India, and other countries with tropical climates. But aside from the emissions produced in getting coconut here, is it wreaking the type of havoc on rainforests for which palm oil in Indonesia and soy in the Amazon have become notorious? No, according to people familiar with production methods. At least, not yet.

For starters, because they can grow in sandy soil, "coconuts are growing often in places where you can't grow other things," said Vinay Chand, a consultant economist in London.

He and other industry proponents tout coconuts as almost a wonder crop: they're sustainable, hardy, don't take much maintenance, and are grown mostly by small-scale rural farmers who stand to benefit from a boost in global market prices for their products.

But the question remains: Will family-run coconut farms give way to large-scale plantations in order for the industry to keep up with growing demand -- and if plantations expand, will they displace precious forest land?

Gallego of Vita Coco said that in South America, there are farms being converted for coconut production, but they were previously cane sugar farms -- not forested areas. And in other regions, he said the popularity of coconut water has simply reinvigorated existing coconut farms or businesses.

Because the coconut trend is relatively new, major environmental groups such as Greenpeace haven't been looking at its environmental impacts; but the consensus, including from a Greenpeace spokesperson, is that coconut is a naturally abundant crop that still tends to be sourced from small-scale producers.

Things could change if coconut consumption continues to expand as rapidly as it has. Foale said suppliers in Asia are still mostly smallholders.

"On the other hand, in Brazil, I believe that there are already large plantations," he said, adding that the rapid increase "suggests that large investors are at work there. Since the marketing of coconut water has been so successful into the U.S., it is likely that the expansion of plantations will continue and perhaps there will be similar destruction of natural vegetation to what has happened in Indonesia and Malaysia."

Hillary Young, an ecologist and Harvard University fellow who has studied the impacts of coconut palms on forests and soils on islands in the Central Pacific, said island ecosystems don't fare well once coconuts are introduced.

"Birds pretty much disappear when coconuts become monodominant, and so you get huge nutrient declines," she said. Then, she added, "you start seeing a collapse of sorts of the natural food web."

The caveat is that Young hasn't focused on the coconut palm industry or on commercial coconut plantations. "I can only extrapolate lessons from more natural systems, and I think it is still an open question of how these lessons would apply to plantation systems," she said.

As of now, there seem to be more questions than answers. But what those in the industry feel sure of is, as Vita Coco's Gallego said, there's no shortage of coconuts in the world, meaning there's likely enough to sustain the trend without great risk to local ecosystems.

So for now at least, the sustainability question remains more about transportation and food miles than about production -- but that question is far from limited to coconut water.

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